What Lukeya brought out were all excellent varieties that had been selected and bred on Earth. They were high-yielding and cold-resistant, and very suitable for planting in Laguge.
"Although my strength is not even one ten-thousandth of my original body, if I can only transform into corn, I can do whatever I want!"
"Lukoya...how about you change your alias to 'Hulu Xiaofu'?"
"Eh!?"
After playing a little joke on Lukoya, Dick was so happy that he wanted to get up and jump onto his desk and perform a "Gambling Dog Quick Shake" to express his joy.
Food has been the foundation for a country to maintain stability and development since ancient times. If Laguge cannot even achieve self-sufficiency in food, then Dick's ambition will only be wishful thinking and his ideal will become delusion.
This wave of summons not only brought in the most suitable agricultural experts as he wished, but also high-yield crops. The biggest obstacle that had plagued Laguge's growth and strength had disappeared at this moment.
057. Field investigation
Ruby Eye wanted to go for a field trip outside the city, so Dick made arrangements without saying a word and asked Black and White Gun to be her accompanying guard. The group of four then prepared to go for a walk around the town first.
Seeing this, Lukoya also wanted to go along, but Dick looked up and down at her figure, which was too prominent in every sense, and looked hesitant for a moment.
If she went out like this, Lukoya would definitely not get cold, but it would definitely attract the attention of the residents.
"How about... you put on a robe outside?"
"No need to bother."
As Lukoya spoke, she turned on the spot, and her body whooshed into a more than one-foot-long mini dragon. She flew directly into Dick's loose wizard robe, with only a tiny head poking out from the collar.
At first glance, Lukoa looks like a pendant hanging on her chest. Even if someone notices that she is a living creature, they will most likely think she is Dick's magical pet.
So the group of people each rode a horse and left the castle in a simple manner.
At this time, Laguge has officially entered spring. The temperature is gradually warming up, and the maximum daytime temperature has reached above zero degrees. The town streets have also regained their vitality, and the shouts of vendors can be heard one after another on both sides of the street.
"Beef noodles, delicious Tieniu beef noodles. If it's not delicious, you can kill me!"
"Chopped green onion, sir, buy some nice-smelling chopped green onion!"
Riding on the wet but relatively clean streets, Ruby-eyed girl with a kerchief wrapped around her face listened to Dick's introduction to the current situation and future plans of the town, while she used her ruby-like eyes to observe everything around her in order to make her own judgment.
Although Ruby Eye agreed to work for Dick, as a good demon king with a pure heart, she was unwilling to help the evil. Therefore, she needed to do further research on this "master" to know how much help she could give to Dick.
Ambition is not a flaw, cruelty is!
Fortunately, the situation in the town was much better than expected. The locals were indeed not rich, and their living standards seemed even worse than in the Winter Kingdom in her original world, but the people's mental outlook was quite good and they were very energetic, which showed that although their lives were poor, they were not without hope.
Moreover, when walking on the street, many people would take the initiative to salute Dick and respectfully call him "Governor". Their attitude was respectful but there was not much panic or fear, which showed that Dick was very popular among the people.
However, the urban area is the core area of the territory after all, so we still have to look at the situation in the countryside.
The group crossed the street. When passing through the commercial district, Dick keenly noticed that there were some unfriendly eyes nearby watching him. He soon discovered that the source of the gazes came from a few wealthy businessmen, who were from the big chambers of commerce.
This group of profiteers gathered together to bask in the sun, while their men were loading bags of grain onto a truck. They happened to meet Dick who was passing by. They immediately looked angry but dared not say anything. They could only use sinister looks, trying to "stare" Dick until he was full of holes.
Dick glanced at them casually, smiled and ignored them.
Since Dick was determined to lower the price of grain, this group of big merchants who united for profit would rather not sell than lower the price, and planned to take the grain they transported to other territories for sale.
Anyway, there is more than one Laguge in the northern territory of the empire. If Dick doesn't buy their food, there are many people who are eager to buy it.
In their view, Dick's move to lower food prices seemed very tough, but in fact he was ignorant of the immensity of the world. He even offended them, the "parents" who helped him feed tens of thousands of people in the territory. His term as governor was basically coming to an end.
These people have inquired privately and learned that Dick did indeed have a lot of food stored up, enough to sustain the local area for several months. This year, he was suppressing bandits and carrying out a large-scale land reclamation campaign, and he seemed confident that he could make Laguge self-sufficient in food production, which had never been achieved in the past.
But the businessmen's attitude towards this was to secretly laugh at him for dreaming.
They all agreed that Dick must have encountered an extremely rare warm winter in his first year in office, and was confused by this "abnormal" climate, thus seriously underestimating the horror of this bitterly cold land, thinking that the winter that made the locals shudder was nothing more than this.
It’s not that all previous governors had thought about vigorously developing agriculture, but without exception they were defeated by the cruel reality.
High-yield crops cannot adapt to the climate here.
The crops that have adapted have pitifully low yields per mu.
These profiteers have already colluded in private. These large chambers of commerce that mainly deal in grain in the northern region are going to unite to impose a grain embargo on Laguge and teach this young governor a lesson. When people start to starve to death here and the situation becomes so serious that it affects the normal mining of cold iron, you will see how you will explain to your father, the duke.
However, they didn't know that Dick was not ignorant of his own strength, but was confident of winning.
If he was worried before that increasing the arable land area by reclaiming wasteland alone would not be enough to feed the local population, now that he has the high-yield corn provided by Lukoya, he no longer has any worries.
Corn is planted at the end of April and will mature in four months. The local black soil in Laguge is very fertile. Even without the support of chemical fertilizers, the initial estimate of the yield per mu will not be less than 300 kilograms.
The original staple food crop in the area, coarse wheat, has outstanding cold resistance, but its growth cycle is slow and its yield is pitifully low. A yield of 80 kilograms per mu is considered a bumper harvest.
As for the taste, this difficult-to-digest coarse grain cannot be compared with corn.
After leaving the city, the group first headed east. There were a large number of farmlands on both sides of the road. At a glance, there were people bending over to work in the fields in almost every field.
Ruby Eye got off the horse, walked to the field by the roadside, grabbed a handful of black mud on her hands, rubbed it gently, then put it in front of her and smelled it, and nodded unconsciously.
“The soil is really good.”
"The entire eastern plains are basically covered with high-quality black soil. It's a pity that we don't have fertilizers and pesticides yet, otherwise the yield could be even higher."
"If you use too much of that stuff, it will damage the soil. For the fertility problem, we can adopt crop rotation, and we don't have to rely solely on spraying pesticides to deal with common diseases and insect pests. I will find a way to solve these problems!"
After returning the soil to the field, Ruby Eyes was about to look somewhere else when she saw a peasant couple walking towards them timidly. They bowed deeply to Dick from more than ten meters away.
Because Dick often goes out to inspect the territory and often appears in front of the public, many people now know him.
Seeing this, Dick signaled to Black and White Gun Dai not to stop them and waved to the couple, asking them to come over.
Not to mention that these two people looked honest and did not have the aura of masters. Even if they were assassins, it would be easy for Dick to deal with them with the black and white gun idiot Garukoya beside him.
"Don't be so reserved. Is there something you want to talk to me about?"
"Governor, we...we are here to express our gratitude to you."
"grateful?"
"My child was infected with a cold in the winter, and you saved him. We are very poor and couldn't afford treatment, so... I just want to say thank you, thank you so much..."
The couple stammered as they expressed their thanks, their demeanor was humble, like common people meeting an official, but the gratitude in their eyes was genuine.
The two told Dick that they had five children, three of whom died young and one was killed by a wild beast. They thought that the last one would also be killed by the cold weather, but Dick helped them in their despair and snatched back their only hope from the hands of death.
Although the couple was from a poor family, they had a simple and sincere heart of gratitude. Even though they could not offer any decent gift of thanks, when they saw Dick visiting the countryside, they could not help but step forward to thank him in person.
After the couple thanked him in person, they returned to their fields to continue working. At this time, Ruby Eye came to Dick and spoke to him in a light tone.
"It seems that you have indeed done a lot of practical things for the local people."
"I am the ruler, and I need their sincere support and loyalty."
Without making any grandiose remarks, in front of Ruby Eyes, Dick made no attempt to conceal the "ambition" he had always harbored.
"It seems you don't want to be a saint."
"Being a saint is too tiring. I don't have that high of an awareness."
Dick said, and smiled at Ruby Eyes.
After touring several villages around the town, the group returned to the city and passed by the labor camp near dusk.
Ruby Eyes did not express any objection to Dick's way of punishing criminals, because compared to executing them all or locking them up for nothing, transforming the criminals physically and mentally through forced labor was actually a very scientific and progressive approach, and it also met the actual needs of Laguge at this stage.
As a ruler, you should be merciful, but you should not be too soft-hearted!
When the group arrived at the farm, the prisoners were finishing their work and lining up to receive their rationed food. Seeing the presence of the Governor, no one knew who started it, but after receiving their food, the prisoners would bow to Dick on the stage, and then eat the soup in an amazing manner, finishing it all.
To be honest, Dick's food standard for the labor camp was very low, with two meals a day, which was barely enough to fill one's stomach. However, many prisoners were grateful for this treatment, because before they were arrested, they had never had a full meal.
Dick's visit this time was not only for inspection, but also mainly to arrange some work.
During the daytime inspection in the surrounding villages, Dick took out corn seeds and recommended them to them, told them how to plant them, and repeatedly emphasized that this is a high-yield, high-quality crop with an output per mu several times higher than that of traditional coarse wheat.
But most villagers are cautious and conservative. They have been growing coarse wheat all their lives and know how bad the local climate in Laguge is. Therefore, they dare not switch to new crops they have never seen before. Even though Dick promised to provide them with a guarantee, many farmers showed little interest.
In their eyes, Dick was indeed better than their predecessor David, but not good enough for them to trust him unconditionally.
Although he felt helpless, Dick did not follow the example of the Corn King and force the farmers to change their crops. He just took out some seeds and asked them to plant a little first to try.
We will know the actual production volume by the end of August.
Fortunately, Dick still has labor camp farms and thousands of prisoners, so he can carry out his agricultural reforms directly and boldly here.
058. Spring is here again for the animals...
There are nearly 16 prisoners currently detained in the entire farm. Excluding some of the elderly, the weak, women and children who are not capable of heavy physical labor, there are more than 40 young and middle-aged people between the ages of and .
Dick allocated a total of 25,000 mu of wasteland to the labor camp in accordance with the high standard of five mu of land per capita. These lands are still in the reclamation stage and are expected to be planted in mid-May, so Dick plans to plant corn on all of them.
Assuming that kilograms of seeds are needed per acre of land, Lukeya needs to produce tons of seeds.
After the field investigation, Ruby Eye gave some valuable suggestions for improvement and also planned to help the farm manufacture some new agricultural tools to improve farmers' work efficiency.
For more than half a month after that, Dick and Ruby Eye went to the farm almost every day. The entire Governor's Office also shifted its focus from military to agriculture, and made every effort to ensure the smooth progress of this year's spring plowing.
Thanks to the restructuring of the mining area before the winter last year, a large number of forcibly conscripted laborers were released. In addition, after this year's anti-bandit campaign, the security environment in the territory has been almost completely renewed. Laguge has burst into unprecedented vitality from top to bottom. Not only has the previously abandoned land been cultivated again, but many farmers have also responded to the order to open up new land and reclaimed a large amount of new farmland.
The only drawback is that the promotion of corn planting is very slow, and many local farmers are only willing to give it a try and plant a very small amount at first.
After all, for the past few hundred years, the staple food crops in the area have been coarse wheat and yam. Black beans, which are quite abundant, can barely be counted as one of them, but people cannot eat too much of them. These three are the only ones that can adapt to the local climate, and the most prominent one is that they are cold-resistant and easy to feed.
As for corn, they had never seen it before, and they were afraid that it was too precious like the other crops from Shannan. If the fields were all infected with it, and there was no harvest in the fall, they would all starve to death.
Dick understood their concerns, so he didn't take any enforcement action.
He believed that time would tell everything, and that this time was not long, the result would be known in four months.
It is worth mentioning that two "small things" happened during this period.
One was that someone spread rumors that the governor, because he failed to extort grain merchants, banned them from selling grain locally, regardless of the lives of local people. In the end, he became angry and expelled all these "kind merchants" from the country, causing the local grain reserves to be exhausted and famine to occur soon.
As soon as Dick heard the rumor, he knew it must be a trick played by those unscrupulous businessmen.
These guys were also very cautious because they were afraid of Dick's revenge, so they waited until they left Laguge before sending people back to spread rumors.
Fortunately, Dick was well prepared. He ordered his private army to leave the city in a high-profile manner, and then asked the granary to sell a batch of "old grain" at a 30% discount.
The reason is that a large batch of grain that the governor ordered from his own chamber of commerce last year will arrive soon. The private army that left the city before was the escort personnel to welcome the grain transport team. Therefore, the governor's office has to clear out the warehouse at a low price now to make room for the new grain that will be delivered.
After this series of operations, the rumors about the famine were self-defeating, and several sources of the rumors were secretly dealt with by the new intelligence agency "Forget-me-not" established by Tia.
It's a pity that only a few minions were caught, and the profiteers had already escaped from Laguge, otherwise Dick would have made these old guys blew away the gold coins!
Almost at the same time as the rumors, another small thing happened which was a good thing. The two hundred war horses that Dick ordered from Count Dupin were finally delivered!
In gratitude for saving the Earl's eldest son Tarn, the Earl's family gave Dick a very generous friendship price for these war horses, and they were all carefully selected high-quality horses.
Dick planned to use these two hundred war horses to train a new 100-man light cavalry. Together with his original fifty horses, it should be enough to deal with the horse bandits that would invade in the summer.
In early May, the snow left over from the winter has completely melted away, and everything in Laguge is coming back to life.
Dick was standing at the edge of a field. In front of him was the first batch of corn that had been planted half a month ago. Green sprouts had already emerged from the soil.
Dick half squatted down, reached out his hand and carefully touched the corn seedlings. The vibrant scene before him made him feel a joy from the bottom of his soul.
"Farming is definitely the best thing for me!"
At this moment, a slightly browned corn cob was suddenly extended in front of Dick. He turned his head and saw that it was handed to him by Lily from the spy group. In the open space behind her, several girls were gathered around the fire, chatting and laughing while roasting corn. The atmosphere was as relaxed as if they were on a picnic.
Well, they did come out to have fun!
Dick is not a devil after all. Although the girls summoned by him signed a "slave contract" with him, their treatment is much better than that of the hard-working workers who signed ordinary labor contracts.
Food and accommodation are provided, and there is a salary. There are at least four days of vacation per month, and no vacation is adjusted unless there is a major incident!
It was freezing cold before, and everyone had to stay in the castle even during holidays. Now that spring has finally arrived and the flowers are blooming, they took advantage of the holiday to make an appointment to go out for an outing together, and dragged Dick out as well.
As the governor of the territory, Dick happened to be the most workaholic one. In the seven months since he arrived in Laguge, he had only given himself no more than five days of vacation.
So Befa took the lead in organizing this outing, just to let Dick relax his body and mind.
Dick took the roasted corn handed to him by Lily and took a bite. It tasted sweet, soft and glutinous with a hint of rich milk flavor. He couldn't help but admire it in his heart. It was worthy of being the top-quality corn that Lukeya had just bought.
